Yahoo Names PayPal Boss Scott Thompson as CEO … It's official. As Kara Swisher reported earlier, Yahoo just named Scott Thompson, the president of eBay's PayPal business, as CEO. Thompson also will be named to the Yahoo board, which has been weighing for months a sale or other possible strategic options for the company.

Yahoo's new CEO Thompson: Five big challenges — Summary: Yahoo's likely new CEO—PayPal president Scott Thompson—has a big to-do list including making the company relevant again. — Yahoo is reportedly set to name a new CEO—PayPal president Scott Thompson—but challenges abound.

Windows Phone partners bet $100M on Nokia Ace — The importance of the Nokia Ace to Microsoft's mobile plans is apparent as sources tell BetaNews of a major marketing push for the smartphone in the second quarter of this year. The Ace will launch in late March, sources confirm …

Google Android Market Tops 400,000 Applications — Google Android Market gave itself a nice new year's present last weekend. The total number of active applications worldwide in the Android Market reached the 400,000 milestone. Android Market has topped the 200K and 300K available apps milestones …

Cisco's Alternative To Skype Has Quietly Been Killed — Cisco has quietly pulled the plug on its ill-fated consumer home videoconferencing system, Umi. This could be the final blow to the company's once-grand consumer plans. — Umi was introduced a little over a year ago, in October, 2010.

Why Best Buy is Going out of Business...Gradually — Electronics retailer Best Buy is headed for the exits. I can't say when exactly, but my guess is that it's only a matter of time, maybe a few more years. — Consider a few key metrics. Despite the disappearance of competitors including Circuit City …

Nobody Goes to Facebook Anymore. It's Too Crowded. — A year ago Steven Levy suggested that Facebook should give us each a single “friend-list do-over.” — A lot of commenters challenged him. “Grow some balls and just unfriend people,” said one of the more even tempered readers.

Spam Finds New Target — Facebook and Twitter Build Up Their Defenses as Hackers Attack Social Networks — Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. are building up their forces to fight an emerging enemy: “social” spam. — One of their foot soldiers is Tao Stein, a Facebook engineer.

2012 Mobile Industry Predictions Survey — First things first. From all of us at Chetan Sharma Consulting, we wish you and yours a very happy, healthy, and prosperous 2012. My thanks to all who participated in our 2012 Mobile Predictions Annual Survey. It gives our community an insider's view of trends.

So, What's Your Algorithm? — We are ruined by our own biases. When making decisions, we see what we want, ignore probabilities, and minimize risks that uproot our hopes. — What's worse, “we are often confident even when we are wrong,” writes Daniel Kahneman, in his masterful new book …

Meet the spectrum bosses — If AT&T-Mo's failure taught us anything it's that if the big U.S. operators are going to grow they can't do it by acquiring each other. Instead they're going to have to buy up what unused spectrum is left on the market to stockpile bandwidth for their future mobile broadband networks.

Anonymous Have Begun Targeting German Neo-Nazis — The Anonymous hacking network has a new target — German Neo Nazis. — Deutsche Welle reports that the new operation is nicknamed “Operation Blitzkrieg”, and sees the group attacking a number of websites linked with the National Democratic Party (NPD).

Misconceptions About iOS Multitasking — There is one iOS “tip” that I keep hearing and it is wrong. Worse, I keep hearing it from supposedly authoritative sources. I have even heard it from the lips of Apple “Geniuses” in stores. — Here is the advice - and remember it is wrong: … Wrong.

No Warrant Needed for GPS Monitoring, Judge Rules — A Missouri federal judge ruled the FBI did not need a warrant to secretly attach a GPS monitoring device to a suspect's car to track his public movements for two months. — The ruling, upholding federal theft and other charges …